Additive manufacturing (AM) enables the seamless integration of product design and manufacturing phases, offering significant advantages over conventional methods. Despite its tremendous progress, certain intractable quality issues persist. These defects result in considerable rework and scrap rates, posing significant challenges to AM’s sustainability. Consequently, there is a vital need to advance online defect detection and mitigation methods in AM processes. This talk will present ongoing research on quality assurance for AM conducted at the Smart Manufacturing Analytics Research and Technology (SMART) Laboratory at Virginia Tech. Topics include smart AM platform development, advanced optical sensing techniques for AM, applications of machine learning for real-time process monitoring in AM, and 3D point cloud-based dimensional integrity assessment for AM.
Dr. Zhenyu (James) Kong is the Ralph H. Bogle Jr. Professor in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech. He earned his Ph.D. in ISE from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2004. His research focuses on sensing, analytics, and AI/ML for smart manufacturing. Dr. Kong has authored more than 120 peer-reviewed technical papers, and his contributions have earned him 24 Best Paper and Poster awards from various conferences and journals. In 2021, SME named him one of the 20 Most Influential Academics in Smart Manufacturing. He is a Fellow of both ASME (2022) and IISE (2020) and received the Dean’s Award for Research Excellence from the Virginia Tech College of Engineering in 2019. He currently serves as the editor for the IISE Transactions (Focused Issue on Design and Manufacturing).
Event Date: March 14, 2025